THE EUROPEAN BISON. 



' * Awake again I say all men 

 Be merry as ye may, 

 For Harry our King has gone hunting 

 To bring his deer to bay." 



So runs the jolly lilt of an old hunting song dating 

 from the time of bluff King Hal ; one can picture 

 him plumed and spurred, galloping after his hounds 

 through the glades of Windsor Park, past H erne's 

 Oak all gnarled and riven, and toiling up the height 

 near the castle with a gay company clad in Lincoln 

 green. Hunting scenes indeed are deeply woven 

 into the fabric of English history ; videlicet William 

 Rufus lying arrow-slain, a huddled heap in the New 

 Forest bracken; and James I. hare-hunting at 

 Royston, in happy ignorance of the impending 

 Gunpowder Plot. England of to-day retains but 

 little of the old romance ; but the Continent of 

 Europe yet harbours many fine beasts of the chase. 

 The burly lynx of Norway, ambushed on the snow- 

 covered pine boughs; the brown bear nosing after a 

 square meal in the Russian forests ; the great elk in 

 the birch woods of Scandinavia ; and the reindeer 

 patrolling the lichen-clad wastes of Lapland, are 

 all cases in point. Wolf and mouflon, ibex and 

 chamois are all interesting ; preeminently is this the 

 case with that magnificent survival of Pleistocene 

 times, the great bison of Lithuania and the Caucasus. 



